Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always assumed the most satisfying part of being a birdwatcher was actually seeing the birds with your own eyes, instead of just photos of them in a National Audobon Society guide. So it seems to me like this motion activated bird cam takes some of the ’sport’ out of birdwatching. Inside the weather-resistant casing is a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that senses motion across a 9×12 foot field-of-view. When a bird enters the frame, the camera can be set to capture up to 20 pictures in 20 seconds which are stored on an included 2GB SD card.

Once mounted the camera can still be panned and tilted up to 15° for the best angle, and there’s even a laser guide showing you exactly where the camera is pointed since it doesn’t have a viewfinder. It’s powered by 4 AA batteries which should keep it running for about 6 months thanks to the camera’s sleep mode which kicks in when no motion is detected, and the fact that it will automatically power itself off at night. Hammacher’s got it for $199.95.

[ The Birdwatcher's Motion Activated Camera ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m not sure if this spherical video camera is the same one we wrote about in August, but while that one was only available in Korea, this one is available to anyone with a web browser and a credit card thanks to Hammacher Schlemmer. The camera is smaller than a golf ball, but is able to capture up to 6 hours of 320×240 30 fps video and audio onto an included 8GB microSD card. Unfortunately it’s not actually able to record for 6 hours straight on a single charge, but 2 1/2 hours of battery life in a device this small isn’t too shabby. The spherecam connects to your PC via USB for transferring video and image files, or you can watch them directly on your TV thanks to an included video-out cable. The best part though is the included headband allowing you to easily wear the camera during extremely physical activities, or, if you’re like me, as a geeky-looking Borg eye patch.

If you want one just head over to Hammacher Schlemmer where you’ll have to pony up $299.95.

[ The Third Eye Video Camera ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’ve ever wondered what’s happening around the house while you’re away, but don’t know the first thing about setting up a remote webcam, the Vue system will be right up your alley. It consists of small, battery-powered wireless cameras that you can pretty much stick anywhere you want to monitor thanks to a built-in magnet and a mountable base. The cameras use a proprietary wireless network technology to increase their battery life (they’re good for capturing about a million frames on what appeared to be a single CR2-sized battery) and send their streams to a central hub which you connect directly to the router in your home. And they have a range of about 300 feet, but that can easily be extended with optional repeaters.

And that’s it. There’s no software to install since everything is handled through the company’s VueZone website where you can access and manage the feeds from every camera in your home once you’ve setup a private account. The feeds can also be recorded, scheduled and even shared with family or friends which makes setting up a teleconference as easy as logging into the site. The Vue system is about to go into a beta period in a month, but what I saw at their stand was already very polished. Since it features a flash UI, the site feels and functions like a standalone app with plenty of drag-and-drop action, but it also means you can’t access it from a flash-less smartphone. However, I apparently wasn’t the first person to visit their booth and suggest they look into creating a dedicated iPhone app.

There’s no word right now on when the Vue System will actually be available for purchase, but an official announcement should come sometime in April.

[ Vue Personal Video Network ]

By Evan Ackerman

This little piece of spy equipment is something that could possibly make that Bond James Bond guy a little jealous, if his watches weren’t consistently endowed with badass weaponry. If you’re more the passive surveillance type as opposed to the lasers and sonic disintegrators and garrote wires and kicking ass and ordering pretentious drinks and getting the girl type, then I pity you, but the Secret Agent Camcorder Watch may be right up your nonthreatening alley. It has a pinhole camera hidden in the number 2 on the face of the watch, with a little mic on the side. The camera captures 352 x 288 full color AVIs for up to 2 hours nonstop before the battery goes dead, and a USB port on the side of the watch allows convenient offloads. The camera can also take VGA (640 x 480) still pics, and the 2 gigs of onboard memory can be used as data storage. And it even works as a watch!

The trick to this is going to be getting the camera and the microphone pointing in a relevant direction without snapping your wrist in half, and I imagine it takes quite a bit of practice to pull it off while simultaneously not looking like someone trying to slyly point their wrist at something.

The Secret Agent Camcorder Watch costs a nickle under $200.

[ BrickHouse Security ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Hey kids! Instead of having to charter a boat, rent expensive diving equipment and risk the bends in order to spend an afternoon playing Jacques Cousteau make-believe, you can now have a similar underwater experience in the comfort of your own aquarium. In fact you don’t even have to get wet, since this Aqua Eye underwater video camera has 2 meters of cable (plus an extra 3 meters of video cable) allowing you to explore the depths of your aquarium while you’re parked on the couch in front of the TV.

The tiny camera head features 4 LED lights on the lens to illuminate the darkest corners of the sunken castles and pirate ships at the bottom of your tank, and the generous 2.7 megapixel CMOS sensor will allow you to see every terrified detail on your fishes’ faces as you harass them in their own domain. That’s right! No longer are you only limited to making their lives miserable by tapping on the glass walls of their cramped prison.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the $180 price tag is worth the approximately 45 seconds of entertainment you can have with this camera in your aquarium. Unless you decide to re-purpose it for ‘what’s clogging the drain?’ duty afterwards.

[ Aqua Eye Underwater Mini Video Camera ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you’re someone who likes to upload video clips to YouTube a lot, and you have trouble remembering where exactly you were when you took the video, you should probably not run for public office any time soon. Also, you may want to have a look at DGX’s DVH586 HD video camera, which is able to add geographic metadata to video clips (just your initial location, I’m guessing) as you take them. On the software side, it’s then able to export that data to YouTube (this just in: YouTube has an integrated video geotagging option). There isn’t much information about the hardware on the camera itself, besides that it’s HD and it uses GPS software from Geotate.

The interesting thing about the Geotate geotagging software is that it doesn’t actually take the time or energy to figure out where you are. Instead, the software takes a snapshot of the raw satellite data, and when you get home, your computer crunches the numbers and derives a location. It’s much faster and more efficient, but if you and your camel driver are lost in the desert and you’re trying to call in an airlift, you’ll both die of thirst (and the camel will probably eat you) before the camera will spit out an actual location. So, you know, just something to be aware of.

According to Geotate, the DGX DVH586 “offers the right user experience at the right price point to penetrate the mass market,” but they don’t say what that price is, or when the camera will be available.

[ LetsGoDigital ] VIA [ Navigadget ]